The Calm
by Tacel
Summary: But none of that mattered now, because the Doctor-Donna was resurfacing and just before the pain followed, she looked at her Doctor in total clarity, and for the briefest of moments someone completely understood him and loved him for it.


Author's Note: Some songs are just too bittersweet perfect, especially when my strange mind reinterprets them to develop a short story. This is not really a 'song-fic,' though; a few lines are interspersed, but that's it.

Disclaimer: Being a college student isn't really lucrative enough to buy the rights to Doctor Who. And Stephen Christian penned "Calm, Calm, Calm Yourself;" I couldn't so much as dream of being that clever.

* * *

_Calm, calm, calm, calm yourself  
When life gets weary  
Calm, calm, calm, calm yourself  
When worry scares you  
Calm, calm, calm, calm yourself  
'Cause I will be here…or there.  
_-Anchor & Braille, "Calm, Calm, Calm Yourself"

* * *

_The Calm_

_

* * *

  
_

_There is no one I would have rather  
Spent my life with than with you._

"We had the best of times," the ridiculously skinny bloke would always repeat in Donna's sleep. She would wake up from these disturbing dreams with tears in her eyes and a resolve never to drink again (and would stubbornly ignore the fact that she usually hadn't had so much as a drop of wine the previous evening). Why such a quirky little man kept popping into her dreams was a mystery she doubted even the least kooky of therapists could solve, and besides, she desperately needed an aspirin now. The Temp Agency was expecting her and after the disaster that was her last job, she really needed one that wouldn't put her in danger of daydreaming anymore.

Unfortunately, one of the many downsides to being a temp was that she usually ended up drifting off to never-never-land, or spaceships that looked like police boxes. After one such mishap, she was startled by the sound of papers being slammed in front of her. Copies waited for no one, apparently. Murmuring something like an apology, Donna trudged over to the copier, and began Xeroxing the toy company's press release for a some new robot _thing_. Like most days of the week, she wondered if this was all she would ever do—daily drudgery for whomever needed a temp. She couldn't help but feel like there had to be something better, but Donna also couldn't quite find the motivation to search it out. So she kept staring at the pictures of ugly plastic robot men, complete with fake lasers and obviously the dimensions were all wrong, because Cybermen didn't look like that. And she _had_ met that strange man, but just once, and he'd looked so broken and she couldn't bring herself to care because she'd just lost someone incredible and amazing and everything her old 'friends' weren't. Donna was reluctant to say love, because it just seemed so inadequate.

When Donna woke up, she was sprawled awkwardly on the floor beside the copier.

"I must be turning into a narcoleptic," she muttered, brushing herself off and placing the finished copies. Perhaps an early lunch to get her blood sugar up was in order.

"Be back in thirty," Donna told the other secretary, who nodded briskly and went back to her work. She thought about calling a friend to meet her, but listening to their endless gossip, something she'd once relished, seemed far too unappealing. It was only .163 miles to the café, and that would probably only take eleven minutes or so, as long as the girl got the order right this time. Donna didn't stop to think how she knew the exact distance to a café she'd only visited once, as her mother chose that moment to call. Rolling her eyes, Donna reluctantly answered the phone,

"What do you want? Is it the car, because I already told you that I needed it tonight."

_There is no one I would have rather  
Raised a little family with,  
And when you tucked the children in at night,  
I couldn't help smiling at their mother's eyes._

There were always an inundation of thoughts going through the Doctor's head, but at the moment, he was more or less focused on the red-headed woman having an argument with some poor sales clerk. Then he remembered (how did someone so clever forget such silly things?) that this was the nineteen-fifties, and of course this woman was not his former companion, the brilliant Donna Noble. He missed her, more terribly than he cared to admit, maybe even a little more than his other companions of the past—it was unfair, he'd been cheated out of time with her. He'd had closure with Rose and Martha, eventually, but not Donna. He tried to wonder if maybe it wasn't over, but a voice that sounded like the mysterious River would chime 'spoilers,' and the Doctor would keep moving, always moving. Why had he come to the fifties anyways? It was so horribly…domestic. He tried not to notice that one corner of his mind was remembering what could have been with Donna; it would have been exciting and wonderful and eventually just a little domestic—but not too much, he wanted to exclaim! Even now he wanted to go back to her London, get some kind of real good-bye, but he'd sacrificed certainties to save his beloved friend's life. He needed to get off this planet, away from happy families with clever red-headed children and endless-could-have-beens. And definitely away from beautiful art thieves who were nothing like the amazing Donna Noble.

She'd called him a Martian more than once. Perhaps a trip to future Mars was just what he needed.

_There is nowhere in this whole world  
That we could not have gone.  
Long distance calls, from distant lands,  
As the sun sets on a foreign sand._

Donna Noble started writing down what she remembered of her strange dreams after she read a magazine article about how it could help you make sense of things. A month went by, in which she wrote about blue boxes and the skinny man in a pinstriped suit, but nothing ever became any clearer. Sometimes the dreams varied—planets with multiple suns and unusual colors, giant markets that reminded her of China but at the same time were far too foreign, and ugly creatures who sang the most beautiful songs. Her journal devolved into a series of scratchy doodling of metal helmets and ugly cylindrical things with telescopes. And always that blue box. She didn't even try and draw the man—it seemed wrong, somehow, to ground him in some kind of reality.

After three months, she threw it away. Dream diaries were such a stupid idea, and she had a date to get ready for. Not that she had high expectations; she was just so bored with the usual crowd. Maybe a change of pace, scenery, _any_ kind of change would get her out of the mundane pattern she'd been following her entire life.

The date was a dud, and all his chatter about work and his travels through the Americas could barely hold her interest. Part of her wanted to scoff and say, "That's all you've done?" which was rather confusing, since she'd never done anything exciting herself. Of course, the poor man picked up on her growing irritation, but was polite enough to stick it out. He didn't call again, though. So Donna found a new, steady job—full time, even. It wasn't a life dream or anything, but it kept her busy and if she didn't shop too much, she could finally move out by the year's end. Talk about a great Christmas present—she was almost looking forward to the stupid holiday.

_  
There is nowhere in this old soul  
That you could not explore.  
You know me inside and out,  
With all my faults, still you love me all the more._

What was it about Christmas that always brought his enemies together? The Doctor could almost hear a slow whine of panic emanating from the air itself as he poked, prodded, and pumped various buttons, levers, and switches of the TARDIS. One enemy lead to another, this time one far more dangerous than its predecessor (and that was saying something). He tried not to let the word 'fleeing' categorize his current route to Earth, but it was there nonetheless. The frazzled Time Lord realized that he was chattering all of this aloud, intermingled with all kinds of nonsense and a few hummed lines of a Christmas carol; the loneliness was starting to get to him, like always. He missed his old companions, Donna especially. It was tempting to try and run into her by 'accident;' it would be so easy to just pop up in Chiswick and catch a glimpse. Maybe he would call Martha instead, see how her wedding plans were coming along (he wasn't sure how she'd gotten the invitation to him, but it had shown up one day, taped to one of the screens).

"Best laid plans and all that," he muttered, five hours later, when he found himself face to face with an astonished Donna Noble. Totally by accident, he swore, but was having a hard time buying into that. Instantly, all of his associations with the redhead came to the forefront of his mind—past, present, and multiple futures. The last of those was the most painful, full of deaths and children, sometimes his and sometimes people he didn't know. But none of that mattered now, because the Doctor-Donna was resurfacing and just before the pain followed, she looked at her Doctor in total clarity, and for the briefest of moments someone understood him completely, and loved him for it.

Then reality came crashing in and he had a screaming woman clinging to him, dying, and he was running out of time. That was irony for you.


End file.
